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Left Coast Bias

A blog by ashbury in Twins Daily

  • Entries

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About this blog

Random musings from a transplanted midwesterner

Entries in this blog

Would you have gone 5 years and $80M for Anibal Sanchez?

This is a repeat of a forum post I made in December 2012. I'm blogging it now mostly for my own convenience; I took the time to look up several pitchers and I don't want to have to search again when I try to remember what I learned. The question was, if you were GM would you have matched the 5/$80M deal for Detroit's Anibal Sanchez? The context now is, when if ever would you sign a pitcher to a long term deal, given that there is room in the budget until the rookies start to earn big dough ..

Anagram update

http://media.cmgdigital.com/shared/img/photos/2012/01/26/19/ca/original_shcool_photo.jpg Previously I posted anagrams of the 2013 Twins active roster. Here are permutations on some recent additions:   Oswaldo Arcia Iowa Carloads I Also A Coward A Cow Loads Air   Scott Diamond Candid Mottos Misadd Cotton Condom Tit Ads   Pedro Hernandez Preharden Dozen Pardoned Her Zen End Red Porn Haze   Anthony Swarzak What's Zany? Akron! Hawk Annoys Tzar Who Yanks Tarzan?

Tigers looking to trade Porcello

I'll try this as a blog entry instead of a forum post.  The Tigers continue to shop Rick Porcello to no avail. MLB Trade Rumors states that the Padres turned down a chance to trade either Huston Street or Luke Gregerson to get him. Other deals have failed to materialize. I suppose the equivalent from the Twins standpoint would be Glen Perkins, factoring in the NL and the Padres home park. Would you make that deal, if the Tigers also saw it that way (and were willing to trade intra-division)?

Managing a 40-man roster for a last place franchise

Originally posted in reply to thread These Call-Ups Are a Downer   The Twins' 40-man roster is apparently at 39 right now, and the desire for waiver-wire flexibility is a reason given not to bring up one or two other players for September, such as Anthony Slama.   How can a last-place team have any issues at all managing their 40-man roster? Just sooooo many talented players, the other teams will scoop an All-Star-in-the-making right up, if the Twins aren't careful?   Indecisiveness, may

13 - A lucky number of pitchers?

The transactions of the last few days boil down to Blackburn being replaced by Deduno, and Parmelee being replaced by... Fien? So, we're back to a roster of 13 pitchers and 3 catchers. Very little scope for pinch-hitting and pinch-running. I guess this has been hashed to death, but it still seems weird to me. Wasn't so long ago that 11 pitchers were enough for a staff. And I think it detracts from the enjoyment of the tactical game - instead of managers having to anticipate opposing moves a

Why is it...?

Why is it that on most days, when I channel surf to ESPN during commercial breaks of the other show I'm watching, I never get an update on how the Twins' game is going, but when they lose a game 16-4 like yesterday it's constantly the game shown on the crawl at the bottom of the screen when I click over there? Ugh.

Inability to drive in runs

The Twins lost 2-1 yesterday, wasting a pretty good season debut by P.J. Walters. From the AP story: The struggling Twins offense couldn't come up with a timely hit. Minnesota went 0 for 9 with runners in scoring position and stranded six runners over the final four innings. "We had plenty of chances, but it just didn't work out for us tonight,'' Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said.   Hm. On offense, the Twins had 5 hits total, but 6 walks to go with them. The Jays had 7 hits, and no walks.

Plouffe has gone poof?

As of May 3, 2011, the sainted Drew Butera had this set of stats for the Twins: AB: 50 BB: 2 H: 5 2B: 2 R: 3 RBI: 4 BA: .100 OBP: .151 SLG: .140 OPS: .291   This morning, I see this for Trevor Plouffe 2012: AB: 36 BB: 7 H: 4 2B: 1 HR: 1 R: 3 RBI: 2 BA: .111 OBP: .256 SLG: .222 OPS: .478   He's been basically five walks, and one double turned into a home run, better than Drew Butera.   Drew came back strong to finish with a .449 OPS. Trevor is already higher than this so can we hope for great

Timely hitting

A digression from the discussion on Morneau's wrist, concerning an opinion that the Twins were one timely hit away from winning the 4-3 game with the Angels, that I'll post here now.   Twins had 8 hits, Angels had 8 hits. Was it a matter of timeliness?   Angels 1st: double, followed by single. One run scores. Angels 4th: single, followed by homer. Two runs score. Angels 7th: homer. One run scores. Twins 8th: hpb, double, single, single, single: Three runs score.   For the game, Twins had sev

Clarity, please

I hope it's not like last year. After the slow start they turned the corner mid-season, and on July 20 just before the trade deadline they were up to 46-51, mirror image of Detroit's 51-46. There was hope of taking a weak division if momentum continued. As a result, despite treading water the next few days up to the very deadline, they did not move any veterans for prospects; they weren't buyers, either, thank goodness. I supported this approach, at the time. But it was a sad mirage:

Mauer Power

I was thinking about the 2012 Twins' imbalance on offense, between getting on base (acceptable) and power (low). A guy we look to for power is Joe Mauer, so I decided to see where he stands at this early stage of the season. Arbitrarily I picked his 2008 season as a benchmark - an excellent season by any standard, but not as insanely high a bar to set as his 2009 season, and one very much in line with his career numbers. In 2008 he had 633 plate appearances, and so far in 2012 he has 83. If

The Value of Supplemental Draft Picks

Regarding the discussion of whom to pick with the #2 choice in the upcoming draft, there is also the group of supplemental picks the Twins will get. Even if the team believes pitching is their sorest need, it's one reasonable strategy to pick a stud position player at #2 and then load up with pitching prospects a little further down in the draft, if you think pitchers are inherently riskier to develop. However, those supplemental draft picks aren't quite the slam-dunk that some people were thi

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